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Travers Vale

{{Short description|English film director}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2018}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Travers Vale

| image = Travers Vale (1a).jpg

| caption = Travers Vale, {{Circa|1915}}

| birth_date = 31 January 1865

| birth_place = Liverpool, England

| death_date = {{death date and age|1927|1|10|1865|1|31|df=yes}}

| death_place = Hollywood, California, USA

| yearsactive = 1910-1926

| occupation = Film director

}}

Travers Edmund Vale, born Solomon Flohm, was an English-born silent film director. Raised primarily in Victoria, Australia, he worked as a photographer, playwright and theatre manager there and in New Zealand prior to his career in film. Early in his career, he was known by the name S. F. Travers Vale under which name he authored his first known play, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1888) which is an adaptation of the 1886 novel of the same name by Fergus Hume. He established his own theatre troupe, The Travers Vale Dramatic Company, which was in residence at the Theatre Royal, Adelaide in 1889 and the Auckland Opera House in New Zealand in 1890. In 1892 and 1893 he was the business manager of the American husband wife magician team of Charles N. Steen and Mrs. Steen.

Sometime after September 1893, but before the birth of his eldest daughter, Vale and his wife, Leah "Lily" Vale, left Australia and resided in India for a brief period before traveling to the United Kingdom. The couple's first child, Violet Rachel Flohm Vale, was born in Cardiff, Wales in May 1894. By 1898 the family had moved to the United States with Vale's first original play written in that country being After the War (premiered October 7, 1898, Athens, Georgia). In 1901 he established the Travers Vale Stock Company which performed his original plays and with whom he also starred in productions of his own works. In the summers of 1901-1903 the troupe was in residence at the Heim brothers Electric Park Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1904, Lily Vale died in Alabama.

After continuing to perform in vaudeville, Vale transitioned into a career as a director for silent films; directing more than 70 films between 1910 and 1926. He began his career in film with the New Jersey–based Champion Film Company in 1910. He continued to make films with companies on the East Coast of the United States over the next several years, including works for the Pilot Films Corporation, the Biograph Company, and Peerless Pictures Studios. From 1916 to 1920 he worked mainly for the World Film Company out of their studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In 1921 he established his own film production company in New York City, Travers Vale Productions, which made the film A Pasteboard Crown (1922). He then moved to Hollywood, California, where his first film made on the West Coast was The Street of Tears (1924, Rayart Pictures). His final film, Western Pluck (1926), was made by Universal Pictures. Several of his films made prior to his move to California featured his second wife, the actress Louise Vale, who died during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.

Early life and career

Travers Vale was born in Liverpool, England on 31 January 1865. The son of Joseph Flohm and Esther Flegeltaub, his parents were Russian Polish Jews who had settled in Britain during the Crimean War. He was born with the name Solomon Flohm.{{cite journal|title=After Eliot: Adapting Adam Bede|author=Margaret Reynolds|journal=English: Journal of the English Association|volume=63|issue=242|date=Autumn 2014|pages=198–223 |doi=10.1093/English/efu015}} Soon after Solomon's birth, his family relocated to Australia. A Victoria government report dated March 17, 1871 lists Joseph Flohm as residing in Sandhurst, Victoria and as an investor in the North Victoria Tribute Company.{{cite news| url=http://gazette.slv.vic.gov.au/images/1871/V/general/19.pdf|page=446|title=North Victoria Tribute Company|work=Victoria Government Gazette|date=March 17, 1871}} The family also lived in Pleasant Creek [Stawell, Victoria] before ultimately settling in Ballarat.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}}

Travers Vale [Solomon Flohm] married his first cousin, Leah Flegeltaub [daughter of Esther's brother Aaron] on 24 July 1893 in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. By this time Solomon had been working as a photographer. His father-in-law, Aaron Flegeltaub, was a respected photographer who had worked for the American Photography Company before establishing a photography school in Ballarat in 1882.{{cite book|title=The Mechanical Eye in Australia|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1986|isbn=9780195546040|author1=Alan Davies |author2=Con Tanre |author3=Peter Stanbury}} In 1887-1888 Vale operated a photography studio in Oxford Street in Sydney, Australia entitled first Solomon Flohm and then Solomon Flohm & Company.

File:Travers_Vale_1890.png

In addition to working in photography, Vale also pursued interests as a playwright and actor. In 1888 the novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886) was licensed to Solomon under the name "S. F. Travers Vale" by the novel's author Fergus Hume.Sussex, p. 168 It was written by Hume in Melbourne in the 1880s and contains many descriptions of Melbourne life at that time.Sussex, p. 1-4 Solomon's melodrama based on this novel is likely the first instance in which he adopted the name Travers Vale. While Travers Vale had purchased the sole right to adapt the novel for the theatre in all of Australia, several pirated versions of the novel were already appearing on the Australian stage by other writers.Sussex, p. 167-170 For his stage adaptation, Travers Vale significantly rewrote the work and his play The Mystery of a Hansom Cab toured Victoria in 1888 where it was publicized as a work by S. F. Travers Vale. Some of the theater stops on this tour included Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne (then known as the Alexandra Theatre) and the Melbourne Opera House.{{cite journal|title=Stage And Study|journal=The New Zealand Observer and Free Lance|volume=XI|issue=659|date=15 August 1891|page=12}} Soon after he was simply using "Travers Vale" in the theatre, and under this name his original play The Artist was staged at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne in October 1888.{{cite news|url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/88555175|title=The Sparrow Nuisance; ROYAL PRINCESS' THEATRE. 'The Artist'|work=Bendigo Advertiser|page=4|date=6 October 1888}}

By 1889, Vale had established his own theatre troupe, The Travers Vale Dramatic Company, which was in residence at the Theatre Royal, Adelaide. There the company presented an original play by Travers Vale, The Cannon's Mouth, on March 23, 1889.{{cite news|url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/44041146/3367503#|title=Theatre Royal|work=The Barrier Miner|date=25 March 1889}} In 1890 the troupe was in residence at the Auckland Opera House in New Zealand.{{cite news|title=The Travers-Vale Dramatic Company|volume=XXVII|issue=8324|date=2 August 1890|page= 6}} In 1892 and 1893, he was working in New Zealand and Australia as the business manager for the Steen-Smith Company of Refined Entertainers; a company which starred the American husband wife magician team of Charles N. Steen and Mrs. Steen, and the Irish ventriloquist Oscar Smith.{{cite news|title=The Steen-Smith Entertainers|work=Wairarapa Daily Times|volume=XIII|issue=4288|date=30 November 1892|page=2}}{{cite news|title=The Steens Challenge the World|work=The Argus|date=15 April 1893|page=16}} As late as September 1893, he was in Brisbane managing the Steens, who were then billed as "Mr. and Mrs. Steens, Professors of Mystery" and were engaged at the Theatre Royal, Brisbane.{{cite news|title=Evening Entertainments; Theatre Royal|date=September 11, 1893|page=6|work=Telegraph}}

International travels and theatre career in the United States

Vale ventured with his wife [who had changed her name to Leah 'Lily' Vale] to India for a brief period before moving on to England. The couple gave birth to their first child, Violet Rachel Flohm Vale (later Violet Hilson after her marriage), on 27 May 1894, in Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales. By 1898 the Vale family had moved to the United States, and Vale's play Strolling Players was given its American premiere at the Lyceum Theatre in Brooklyn, New York on Valentine's Day 1898. The premiere of a new play in four acts by Vale, After the War, was premiered in Athens, Georgia on October 7, 1898.{{cite book|title=The New York Clipper annual for 1899: containing theatrical and sporting chronologies for 1898|publisher=The Frank Queen Publishing Company|year=1899|author=George, E. Eldred}}

In 1900, Leah gave birth to their second child, Olga Vale. By 1901 Vale had established the Travers Vale Stock Company, a theatre troupe which performed his own original plays and within which he also acted in productions of his own works.{{cite magazine|magazine=Billboard|volume=13|issue=37|date=November 23, 1901|title=After the War}} The company toured the United States in performances of After the War in 1901. In the summers of 1901-1903 the troupe was in residence at the Heim brothers Electric Park Theater in Kansas City, Missouri.{{cite magazine|title=The City of Winds|magazine=Billboard|page=6|volume=XIV|number=20|date=May 14, 1902}} Leah Vale died in Alabama on 13 May 1904.{{cite news|url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/38685411|title=Announcements; Deaths|work=Western Mail|date= 23 July 1904}} Travers later married the actress Louise Vale who performed in some of his films. She also predeceased him; dying of the Spanish flu on October 28, 1918 in Madison, Wisconsin.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1918/10/30/archives/obituary-1-no-title.html|title=Obituariyes; Louise Vale|date=October 30, 1918|page=11|work=The New York Times}}

The Travers Vale Stock Company remained actively performing in theaters in a variety of cities in the United States into the second decade of the 20th century. As late as October 1911 the company was engaged at the Gayety Theatre in Hoboken, New Jersey performing a production of Alexandre Bisson's Madame X.{{cite journal|volume=XXIV|number=5|date=October 7, 1911|journal=Variety|title="Madame X" Packs 'Em}}

Film career

Vale began his career as a film director with the New Jersey based Champion Film Company; directing that company's very first film Abernathy Kids to the Rescue (1910).Langman, p. 1 A few years later he went to work as a director for the newly formed Pilot Films Corporation in Yonkers, New York, directing that company's first film, The Blacksmith's Story (1913).Goble, p. 351{{cite book|title=The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry|author=Anthony Slide|year=2014|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=9781135925611|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C37sAgAAQBAJ}} That same year he adapted Dion Boucicault's 1857 play The Streets of New York into a film for Pilot,Goble, p. 969 and made the Western The Abandoned Well. In 1914 he made the first film adaptation of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewitt for the Biograph Company; a work which is extant within the archives of the George Eastman Museum.Farina, pp. 73-74 The following year he made another film adapted from a novel for Biograph, Père Goriot, after the 1835 novel by Honoré de Balzac.{{cite journal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eUs_AAAAYAAJ&dq=Père+Goriot+1915+film%C2%A0Biograph+Company&pg=PA1501|title=A Strange Crime: Balzac's Extraordinary Story of 'The Country Parson' as a Three-Reel Biograph|date=April 28, 1915|journal=The Moving Picture World|page=1501}}

In 1916 Vale made a few films with Peerless Pictures Studios in New Jersey, and then joined the roster of another New Jersey film company that same year, the World Film Company. He remained active making numerous films for World through 1920. In 1921 he established his own film production company in New York City, Travers Vale Productions, which made the film A Pasteboard Crown (1922).Eckert, p. 175 After this, Vale moved with his family to California to join the roster of directors at Rayart Pictures where he made the film The Street of Tears (1924).Rainey, p. 598 For Independent Pictures he wrote the screenplay for the 1925 Western Barriers of the Law.Katchmer, p. 572 He served once again as director for his final film, Western Pluck (1926), which was made by Universal Pictures.Katchmer, p. 7

Travers Vale died in Hollywood, California on 10 January 1927.Vazzana, p. 336

Selected filmography

File:Streets of New York (1913).webm

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Citations

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Bibliography

  • {{cite book|title=Hollywood on the Palisades: A Filmography of Silent Features Made in Fort Lee, New Jersey, 1903-1927|author=Rita Ecke Altomara|year=1983|isbn=9780824092252|publisher=Garland Publishing}}
  • {{cite book|title=Focus on Shakespearean Films|year=1972|publisher=Prentice Hall|editor=Charles W. Eckert|isbn=9780138076443}}
  • {{cite book|title=Screening Charles Dickens: A Survey of Film and Television Adaptations|author=William Farina|year=2022|isbn=9781476647869|publisher=McFarland & Company|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dDyVEAAAQBAJ}}
  • {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yyqc0Qa6b60C&q=The+Complete+Index+to+Literary+Sources+in+Film|title=The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film|year=2011|isbn=9783110951943|publisher=Bowker-Saur|editor=Alan Goble}}
  • {{cite book|title=A Guide to Silent Westerns|author=Larry Langman|year=1992|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|isbn=9780313278587|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-40mFfGB4VMC}}
  • {{cite book|title=Eighty Silent Film Stars: Biographies and Filmographies of the Obscure to the Well Known|author=George A. Katchmer|year=1991|isbn=9780899504940|publisher=McFarland & Company}}
  • {{cite book|year=1987|title=Film History: An International Journal, Volume 1|editor=Richard Koszarski|publisher=Indiana University Press}}
  • {{cite book|title=A Companion to the Biopic|year=2020|isbn=9781119554813|publisher=Wiley|editor=Ashley D. Polasek & Deborah Cartmell|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Uj21DwAAQBAJ}}
  • {{cite book|title=The Strong, Silent Type: Over 100 Screen Cowboys, 1903-1930|author=Buck Rainey|year=2004|isbn=9780786412860|publisher=McFarland & Company}}
  • {{cite book|title=Blockbuster!: Fergus Hume and the Mystery of a Hansom Cab|author=Lucy Sussex|publisher=Text Publishing|year=2015|isbn=9781922148940}}
  • {{cite book|title=Silent Film Necrology: Births and Deaths of Over 9000 Performers, Directors, Producers, and Other Filmmakers of the Silent Era, Through 1993|author=Eugene Michael Vazzana|year=1995|publisher=McFarland & Company|isbn=9780786401321}}

External links

{{Commons category|Travers Vale}}

  • {{IMDb name|id=0883920|name=Travers Vale}}

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{{Travers Vale}}

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Category:1865 births

Category:1927 deaths

Category:English film directors

Category:Deaths from cancer in California

Category:20th-century English male actors

Category:English expatriates in the United States

Category:British expatriates in Australia

Category:British dramatists and playwrights

Category:Articles containing video clips